The new OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Ažubalis, urged the Organization's participating States to focus on resolving existing conflicts and achieving concrete progress in addressing transnational threats and safeguarding fundamental freedoms in his inaugural address to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna . READ MORE

BAKU – Azerbaijan and the European Union signed a deal Thursday that commits the Caspian country to supply Europe with "substantial volumes of gas" to implement the planned Southern Corridor of pipelines bypassing Russia, the EU said. READ MORE

Russia has published the report of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) on the causes of the April plane crash in which Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other people died. As expected, its conclusions have outraged the bulk of Poland's political elite. READ MORE

MONTREAL - Attention to Central Asian energy is most often driven by such gigantic projects as the Turkmenistan-China pipeline or the question of doubling the volume of the oil pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) from northwest Kazakhstan across southern Russia to the Black Sea or other such strategic projects having a trans-continental, or at least semi-continental, scale. READ MORE

In the interview to the Latvian daily ”Diena” former Ukrainian president  V.Yushchenko said that European policy often looks like the natural merit not requiring any evidence, and that integration of Ukraine into EU is perceived as one-sided, i.e. exceptionally the Ukrainian act. Europe assigns to the candidate tasks but cannot avoid dual policy on such issues as security, energy, visa policy and defense. European Union would benefit from the accelerated integration of the country with 46 million citizens; therefore the current slow down of Ukraine’s euro integration should be treated as a bad decision. According to V.Yushchenko, his country has always been within the system of European values. READ MORE

In the end of 2010, president Saakashvili of Georgia (a couple of times) aired his initiative to start dialogue with Moscow. No preconditions were put forward by the Georgian side. READ MORE

The Serbian government will soon have to clarify to its citizens its policy of neutrality towards NATO, argues Jelena Radoman, a research fellow at the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. READ MORE

MONTREAL - Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, two relatively small countries in geo-political terms, are demonstrating the foresight and political skills that will help them - rather than the likes of the fuel-hungry United States, European Union and China - take the driver's seat in the next phase of evolution of Central Eurasian energy geo-economics. READ MORE

Iran's Energy Minister Majid Namjou said Saturday that Tehran and Ankara are working out a roadmap to illuminate the proper path for the two sides' future cooperation in the energy sector. READ MORE

The European Nabucco natural gas pipeline project and its Russian competitor South Stream could merge, a U.S. diplomat said, in what would be a surprising turn to the years-long pipeline war. READ MORE